Monthly Newsletter of the Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Spectroscopy of Supercapacitor Electrodes in Operando
X-ray spectroscopy of graphene supercapacitor electrodes under operating conditions reveals changes in electronic structure and bonding. The research could lead to an improvement in the capacity and efficiency of electrical energy storage systems needed to meet the burgeoning demands of consumer, industrial, and green technologies. Read more…
Electrocatalysts are responsible for expediting reactions in many promising renewable energy technologies, but techniques for investigating their mechanism of action have not been very effective or available. However, recently a team of Stanford researchers used enhanced x-ray technology at the ALS in a novel way to observe the behavior of individual electrons during important chemical processes. What they learned has upended long-held scientific understanding of how metal oxide catalysts work. Read more…
Industry@ALS: Takeda Advances Diabetes Drug Development at the ALS
Type 2 diabetes affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide. In the pursuit to better treat this disease, pharmaceutical company Takeda has identified the human receptor protein GPR40 as a potential new drug target. In collaboration with the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology, which operates protein crystallography beamlines at the ALS, Takeda scientists have implemented a novel technique that is furthering their understanding. Read more…
2015 ALS User Meeting: Save the Date!
A quick reminder to save Monday, October 5 through Wednesday, October 7, for this year’s User Meeting. The ALS Users’ Executive Committee (UEC) and meeting organizers have already collected a full complement of focused workshops that will follow the plenary sessions. Registration and poster submission information will be available online in early July.
Moore Foundation Funds ALS Researchers for Promising New Technique
A novel x-ray scattering concept by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab) Advanced Light Source (ALS) is receiving support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in the amount of $2.4 million. The grant was awarded in April by the foundation. The lead investigator on the effort will be ALS Division Deputy Zahid Hussain with ALS Director Roger Falcone acting as co-PI on the project. Read more…
X-Ray Microscopy: The First 120 Years
Join scientist Janos Kirz as he follows the development of x-ray science from the moment Röntgen discovered the “new kind of rays” that could reveal the structures of opaque objects, to the explosion of new x-ray sources, optics, detectors and analysis techniques that now permits imaging of molecules at atomic resolution. This hour-long talk was presented at an ALS Colloquium on April 27, 2015. Watch the video…
Back in 2003, students from UC Berkeley’s art, engineering, and architecture classes came to the ALS to practice drawing in a technical environment. A month after their two evenings of sketching around the experiment floor, they presented the fruits of their labors to ALS scientists and staff. See more of their art work and the reactions of staff…
Operations Update
For the user runs from April 15 to May 17, 2015, the beam reliability [(time scheduled – time lost)/time scheduled)] was 90.0%. For this period, the mean time between failures (MTBF) was 32.5 hours, and the mean time to recovery (MTTR) was 224 minutes. A failure of the Storage Ring gradient power supply on May 7 resulted in the loss of 40.1 hours of user beam time.
Detailed information on reliability is available on the ALS reliability bulletin board, which is located in the hallway between the ALS and the control room in Building 80. Questions about beam reliability should be directed to Dave Richardson (DBRichardson@lbl.gov, x4376).
ALS in the News
